I actually think you're actually missing a bit of the reason I brought up the point about them being slaveowners. Equally relevant to my argument is that they got from place to place on horseback and that they carried muskets and would have uniformly believed that iphones and chatgpt are witchcraft lol. I don't disagree with a word you've said there, and maybe it isn't useful for me to categorize them each as slaveowners when I myself know that it was more complicated than that.

I'm a strong believer in not judging figures of history by different times and different standards (to a certain extent.) Even while some of the founding fathers owned slaves, that's no reason to dismiss everything they've ever said. But I think the stark discrepancies between time periods I mention that those words shouldn't be held to the high esteem that they are.

https://medium.com/thought-thinkers/the-case-for-collapse-a4ece4c3e572

This piece emerged in part from our exchange. I don't expect you to agree with each word of it, and as with this piece here, I can imagine some strong arguments against significant parts of it. I've been having an interesting time exploring the different sides of this. For the next piece I have planned, my running title will unironically be "The Case for Tyranny."

Thanks for the reply, Kyle.